Thing of Darkness
by debbiechan
Summary: Ichigo, Zangetsu, Ishida, and Shirosaki in a world of shadows and identity crises. Slight spoilers for Arrancar arc.


Thing of Darkness

By debbiechan

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach, but I am full of malicious intent towards its characters.

Description: Ichigo, Zangetsu, Ishida, and Shirosaki in a world of shadows? This ficlet was inspired by Quaedam's fanart, "Anyone's Guess" found at DeviantArt and by the Super-sized Shakespearean Challenge of Doom ™ at the LJ community Bleach Bard. Please do a search for these sites; they're worth it.

Warnings: R for violence. _Slight spoilers for Arrancar arc. _

This ficlet is set during chapter 190, after Soul Society but before Ichigo seeks out the Visored's secret den. Rukia and the other Shinigami have not yet arrived in the World of the Living, and Ichigo is moping over the possibility that he has a monster living inside him.

"_This thing of darkness I  
Acknowledge mine."  
--The Tempest (V, i, 275-276) William Shakespeare_

Kurosaki Ichigo was face-down, half-asleep against his thin pillow when it occurred to him that his dream world was distinctly different from his Inner World. He had never encountered Zangetsu while sleeping. Only when awake and charged up from fighting had Ichigo ever fallen into that noiseless place of slanted buildings, falling boxes, crucial choices.

I_nner as in … the world of my **soul**, right?_

In the ten days of training before Soul Society, Urahara had tried to illuminate Ichigo about the Inner World, but the boy's slack-jawed response to the words "duality of every man's nature" had made the shopkeeper smile and pour more tea.

"_Glunk, glunk, glunk_," Urahara had said, imitating the pouring sound of tea filling Ichigo's cup. "You hear how noisy the tea is at first? Then how quietly it pours when the cup is almost full? One day you will need to find the quiet--don't give me that look, Kurosaki-san; I am being a wise sensei here! You will need to find the quiet to think about these things. Physical exercise is not the only thing that trains a fighter."

For some reason, remembering those words made Ichigo think of Ishida. Ishida Uryuu who was always quiet, who made weighty responses in literature class, who was so skinny he looked like he lived off thin air and deep thoughts.

Ichigo raised himself on his elbows.

"_The next time we meet, we meet as enemies." And just **what** had Ishida meant by that shit?_

It was early evening, quiet as quiet gets in the Kurosaki household, and Ichigo decided that his mind was blurry from not having slept much lately. Why else had he felt a stab of rivalry with a guy who didn't have any powers?

He pictured Ishida somewhere adjusting his glasses and figuring out the whole cup of tea business. That being full of _shit_ meant that you could be quiet enough to figure shit out … or something.

That was when Zangetsu appeared out of nowhere.

The sight of the severe entity in a tattered coat didn't startle Ichigo. After Soul Society, there wasn't much that could surprise him. What was weird was that Zangetsu was standing outside the bedroom window, floating above a dusky street, fixated on a sight below--not on Ichigo, as Zangetsu usually was.

Ichigo stretched, got out of bed, and walked to the window.

"Yo! Old man!"

The pale, angular face turned to Ichigo and spoke no acknowledgement.

"Why are you here?" Ichigo didn't want to raise his voice because his family downstairs might hear. He spoke in a hiss. "Where are the weird buildings? Why are you--?"

N_ot in my soul but in a dream._

The realization disappointed Ichigo. He was dreaming. That wasn't really Zangetsu out there, and so there could be no answers, no new strengths to attain.

Ichigo felt his palm open as though it wanted to seize a weapon.

"Someone," said Zangetsu in a voice of deep mourning, "is going to destroy me."

Ichigo felt dread flood his body.

He looked down where Zangetsu was looking. Expecting to see the monster, the white-haired, crazy-eyed Hollow version of himself (for who else could threaten Zangetsu?), Ichigo was hit with yet another shock.

There was Ishida standing on the sidewalk. Hands in his pockets, hard scowl on his face.

"The enemy," said Zangetsu as he bowed his dark-haired head and began to dissolve into black specks. "The enemy is always yourself--you know this, Ichigo."

Ichigo opened his mouth, but he could not call Zangetsu's name.

G_ood thing this is a dream because I can't fight._

For someone who had seen with his own eyes the solidity and substance of ghosts, breathed the warm air in Soul Society, and stood against the hard wind of the Inner World, Ichigo could not say for certain if dreams owned some reality or not.

Surely, before this one, his experience with dreams had been that they were all random and dumb. Dreams about toast, dreams that he was onstage in a production of Macbeth and had forgotten his lines, dreams about Karin and Yuzu taking one another's backpacks by mistake….

As Zangetsu faded away and the black specks that were left of him turned into white specks like dust in twilight, Ichigo wondered--with a morbidity he knew was uncharacteristic of him--if he was having one of those _prophetic_ dreams.

So what was the big prophecy? Ishida standing on a corner looking pissed? The very idea of anyone destroying Zangetsu …_where is Zangetsu?_

A figure, weapon raised high over its head, appeared in the distance, and Ichigo suddenly didn't care if dreams were real or not. His own arm rose in response, as if wielding the sword he knew he did not hold.

"Hey partner!" The black silhouette pitched its thin black sword in Ichigo's direction. "Catch!"

The sword whizzed past Ichigo's head, into a nothingness that had been Ichigo's bedroom a moment before.

_Zangetsu?_

No, it wasn't Zangetsu but it was wearing Zangetsu's clothes, as Ichigo had upon achieving ban kai, and it was lean and swaggering down the neighborhood sidewalk.

"You looking for me, partner?" It spoke in a high, delighted voice. That second before it walked out of shadow and its mask caught a gleam of lamplight, Ichigo recognized it. It was _that thing_, the Hollow who had been calling every night since the battle with Byakuya: _I am going to win this one, Kurosaki. I am going to come out and play._

"I am going to destroy you," said Ishida Uryuu in that high and mighty way of his.

Ishida was talking to the Hollow.

Ichigo felt his mouth drop open. _What?_

Why the hell was Ishida talking to the Hollow? This dream was _Ichigo's_ inner turmoil manifested, not Ishida's.

The Hollow stood, just under the dramatic halo of a streetlamp, and spread his palms. "Me? I'm unarmed. It's Kurosaki you want, and I'm not Kurosaki. He won't fight you. He can't do _shit_ right now."

The Hollow mask, the same narrow mask with the sweeping stripes over the left brow that Ichigo had discovered again and again in Soul Society--the mask talked in a crazy-person voice. It bared crazy-beast teeth over Zangetsu's black robe. It looked so much like Ichigo himself under a shock of white hair.

"Kurosaki can't do shit," laughed the Hollow. "I tried to throw him a sword. He--he--(maniacal laughter) _missed!_"

Ichigo felt a surge of concern for Ishida, because dream or not, the Hollow was powerful, and even a dream-Ishida could not battle this thing with haughty pronouncements.

Ishida didn't seem the slightest bit ruffled. "I know who you are," he said in that steady voice. That low and breathy and threatening voice. "You are not even worthy of being called an enemy because I have no contest or quarrel with you." _That voice Ichigo hated._

"You are inhuman. A thing to be taken down. Put out of its misery." _Damn it, Ishida, don't you remember that you lost your powers in Soul Society?_

"If I'm a beast, then are you a white angel?" asked the Hollow. "Oh, look at you. A faultless saint, a holy Quincy."

A_ngel? _Ichigo remembered that Ukitake-san had mentioned rumored sightings of Ishida's fight with the twelfth division captain. One arched wing glowing over the Quincy's shoulder, a power so terrible it ate the roofs off Seireitei buildings.

"Shut up, Kurosaki," said Ishida, and he stepped toward the Hollow and thrust his open hand against its face.

The shock of the perspective shift caught him just as the hand smashed against his face. Big knuckled, long white fingers forked over his nose, clenching his cheeks. Then it was not strange to be in this body, only strange to have Ishida's fingers clamping his mouth.

C_an't breathe. Can't talk._

"Shut up, Kurosaki," Ishida repeated, pushing his hand harder against cheek and jaw.

I_shida, it's me._

Ishida looked into the Hollow's eyes as if he saw Kurosaki Ichigo there and just didn't care. Once upon a time, Ishida had considered Ichigo a rival. Now he considered Ichigo a _Hollow._

I_sn't that what I am? _Despite human-like hands that rose to grip Ishida's wrist. _You can't kill me this way, Ishida. And you don't have the powers to break this mask._

Zangetsu's black cape fluttered in a gust of wind and fell against Ichigo's tan pants, the ones he had changed into after school. Ichigo felt himself standing in his white socks, in damp grass, on a darkening evening. _A Hollow wearing a Hollow mask. _

Ishida pulled his hand away, and Ichigo felt a raspy intake of breath through nostril holes. There was still some sort of pressure against his sinuses--the bony weight of the mask itself?

"Aren't you going to beg for your life, Kurosaki?"

"Eeeee! I think you like me, Avenging Angel. You don't really hate Shinigami, do you? You have sword envy and wish you had my sort of power, right?"

The one who had answered was the Hollow. The one who drew a blade was the Hollow. Ichigo could only watch--from the nothingness that was once his bedroom high above the sidewalk corner--as Hollow Ichigo knelt on the grass and with two fists planted Zangetsu, the sleek black blade with the silver chain, into the ground.

"Here you go, little Quincy. I challenge you." The Hollow tossed his white hair. "If you can pull this sword out of this lawn, I will declare you king of all England."

I_shida, don't play his games_. Ichigo opened his mouth and opened his fists, but he was captured in a dream world where speech was impossible and Zangetsu wasn't his sword. At least he hoped this was a dream world. _Ishida, don't--!_

Ishida's bow was drawn. It was the simple configuration of blue light that Ichigo had seen him use in that long-ago contest, the rivalry snapped open by hollow bait.

I_shida, you're an idiot**. You're**_ _the hollow bait here. He wants to kill you._

In a flash, Hollow Ichigo had knocked Ishida to the ground and was kneeling beside him, grinning at the arrow still pointed at his throat.

"You hesitate," said Hollow Ichigo. "Does it matter to you at all, Angel, that I ripped apart countless innocents? All those people Kurosaki could not protect? Your friends? That I cleaved through their chests with my fingernails and crunched their skulls in my mouth and oh, _delicious_--eating Kurosaki himself was the most fun of all."

"You didn't destroy Kurosaki," Ishida said in a quiet voice. Light from his bow lit black hair fanned against the grass an unnatural glowing blue. Ishida had always been a little sickly pale; in this light he looked translucent. _Dreams are like this_, Ichigo told himself. _Ishida really isn't going to die._

The Hollow plucked off its mask with ease and showed its true face. "No, no, Angel," it said. "There's no Kurosaki anymore." The Hollow's face was white, humanoid, black-lipped and grinning. "There's only me, and you _still want to protect me_."

Ishida let out a sharp cry and released the arrow.

Ichigo felt his own face swatted with fire, and then everything was blackness.

"Ichi-nii? " His sister's voice at the door. "Is it okay to come it?"

Ichigo was wide awake, pulling his white-socked feet closer to his body so he could sit cross-legged. "Karin?"

Ichigo would not forget his dream, but he would not have the quiet to dwell on it for many, many months to come.

E_ND_

A/N: I love shounen manga. Boys playing with swords. The slings and arrows of teenage identity issues. Maybe yaoi elaborates on some archetypal love/hate relationship between all shounen rivals, but I didn't intend this little fic to be slashy. Or maybe I did. I dunno. It was a _dream. _ Feedback please--I'm curious as hell as to what people think of it.


End file.
